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Death is the cessation of life in a living being, whether through natural means or through killing. It is the natural part of all living beings.
There are various beliefs concerning death that are held by humans. There are those who believe that living beings simply cease to exist upon death, while there are those who believe in an afterlife where the living being's soul and/or spirit goes to. In Christianity, for example, there is the belief of heaven for the righteous and the faithful and of hell for the unbelieving and the wicked. Rituals for the deceased vary from one culture to another, with the most common being the funeral which allows the friends and family of the deceased to express and share their griefs with one another and to bid farewell and even a safe journey to the preferred afterlife of the deceased.
Mainstream Smurfs Media[]
In the cartoon show episode "The Smurfs And The Howlibird, Hefty mentions something about the Smurfs ending up in "eternal sleep" if the Howlibird got them, implying that Hefty was mentioning their fate.
In the episode "Sir Hefty", after Hefty Smurf battles the dragon, they both fall into the river and get washed away by the stream, causing the other Smurfs to think Hefty sacrificed his life to save the entire village and themselves, causing them to mourn his "false" passing until it is shown that Hefty actually survived.
In the episode "Smurphony In 'C'", after Harmony played the shazalakazoo, which made all the other Smurfs pass out, he tries to find a way to revive them, but nothing worked, causing him to believe they were gone. But when he begins his farewell tune, his "off-key" music wakes up every Smurf.
In the episode "The Abominable Snowbeast", some Smurfs thought Smurfette was gone when they ended up in an accident, same went with Papa Smurf and other Smurfs when they thought the previous group perished as well.
In the episode "The Clockwork Smurf", Imperia made a big rumour about King Gerard's death, claiming he passed away in bed.
In the episode "Squeaky", Smurfette learns to deal with the death of her pet mouse Squeaky after he heroically helped save Papa Smurf's laboratory from being burned up in a fire. At first Smurfette takes it very hard as the Smurfs give the mouse a proper burial, and she decides to run away because she did not want to face the possibility of seeing any of her fellow Smurfs passing away. After she was rescued, though, Smurfette learns that she must accept death as inevitable and live on while cherishing the memory of her pet.
It can be assumed that in "The Lost City Of Yore", Smurfette thought Papa Smurf died when Nosey Smurf opened the box of the scepter, which actually made Papa unconscious.
In the episode "Smurf Me No Flowers", Brainy tells his fellow Smurfs how he had heard from Papa Smurf that Lazy has only a few days left to live, and so they help make Lazy's remaining days peaceable and enjoyable. Lazy, realizing that he had wasted much of his life on sleeping, decided to use his remaining days doing the most daring things he could imagine doing. In his final daring act, which was to tame the wildest beast (that is, to do a bull fight, although his fellow Smurfs had switched out a bull for a harmless cow they have disguised), Papa Smurf reveals to Lazy and all the other Smurfs that he had meant that Vanity's plant had only a few days left to live, and he was working on restoring the plant to life. This made Lazy realize the danger he put himself and his fellow Smurfs in, and so saved themselves by running to the village before the wild bull trampled them.
In the episode "Clumsy Luck", it was presumed that Clumsy perished when one of the meteors in a meteor shower crashed into his house when it fell upon the Smurf Village. The Smurfs all mourned for his passing, only to find out that Clumsy had escaped that fate by leaving the village earlier on and then returned to visit the village once more before isolating himself again due to his perceived carrying of a "bad luck" curse when he broke Vanity's mirror by accident.
In the episode "The Patchwork Bear", Patchwork was telling the story of how the crystal kingdom ended up frozen by Crackle, he mentions the death of the former Emerald Emperor of the kingdom by saying the Emperor "went to the big crystal palace in the sky", only to be assumed Patchwork meant the Emerald Emperor passed away.
Death also occurs a few times to humans in the cartoon series. In the special "The Smurfic Games", Gargamel's cousin Argus dies, taking his castle with him as his body disappears. In the episode "Chlorhydris' Lost Love", the evil witch's rival Drusilla ends up turned to stone when the petrification spell she tries to cast on Vanity ends up reflected back unto her instead.
In The Smurfs 2, Vexy and Hackus nearly passed away due to a lack of Smurf essence. Smurfette wrote the formula to transform Smurf-like creatures into Smurfs to Gargamel and he cast it on Vexy and Hackus into Smurfs.
In Smurfs: The Lost Village, Smurfette sacrifices herself to save her fellow Smurfs and the Smurfettes of Smurfy Grove from Gargamel, causing her to revert back into a lump of blue clay. It wasn't until Smurfette was brought back to Smurf Village where every Smurf came together to honor her where the power of love brought her back to life.
Empath: The Luckiest Smurf stories[]
In the Smurfs' belief system in the EMPATH: The Luckiest Smurf story series, they believe that all good and faithful Smurfs will be rewarded with entrance into a place called "the smurfy hereafter", which turns out to be called Elysium, a place that resembles typical Judeo-Christian descriptions of heaven. The other afterlife destination is Tartarus for the wicked. The Pool Of Souls serves as a sort of purgatory for spirits that are not deemed worthy of either place. The Smurfs usually treat the death of their fellow Smurfs as well as other living beings with a funeral and private prayers to Mother Nature for guidance and comfort.
In the story series, Papa Smurf and his little Smurfs all dealt with the death of Papa Smurf's fellow Smurfs, including his wife Lillithina, when an unknown disease took their lives, leaving the children as orphans. Eventually with Papa Smurf becoming the de facto village leader and father figure, he and his little Smurfs all bonded together and became a family that grew in their relationship with each other as they helped run an entire village together. Empath would come to know the existence of his mother sometime after his 150th birthday and would mourn her loss along with Smurfette. Papa Smurf himself would die at the age of 712, for whom the Smurfs present in the village at the time would hold a funeral. Empath himself would pass away at the age of 1150, leaving behind his great-grandson Polaris who would become Traveler Smurf.
In Psychelia, death is referred to as the "day of ascension", when they believe the spirit of the Psyche passes from his or her body and potentially joins with the spirits of the Great Ancestors. In the "day of ascension" ritual, the deceased Psyche's body is placed within a dissolution chamber where it is dissolved into earthly elements before it is disposed outside Psychelia. However, Psyches that are permanently exiled and disconnected from the communal mindlink of their fellow Psyches in Psychelia will be subject to degeneration after a year of their disconnection, which means they will pass away. Polaris was subject to this and would have died if Papa Smurf had not mixed the Long Life Elixir for him to take that, along with Empath engaging in the mindlink with his fellow Smurfs, would extend his life long past the point of degeneration.
Hero: The Guardian Smurf stories[]
In the HERO: The Guardian Smurf story series, Hero himself would die around the age of 712, for whom the Smurfs present in the village at the time would hold a funeral. This would begin a period known as the Year Of Death in which most of Hero's fellow Smurfs except for Abloec, Fergus, Brainy, and Smurfette would pass away. 200 years earlier, Hero's first wife Wonder passed away due to her life span being shorter than Hero's because she was a Mirror Of Opposition creation.
LD Stories[]
In The Smurfs: Light and Dark, there are different beliefs pertaining to the death of other beings.
Humans[]
Almost all humans in both the Good King's castle and King Gerard's castle, as well as other nearby kingdoms, are of Catholic faith, and so they believe that a person's soul departs from the physical body in death and either ascends to Heaven or descends to Hell with the Lord being the ultimate judge of their fate.
Falla believes that when someone dies, their soul will be reincarnated and they may or may not have any recollection of their past lives. However, she is certain that if someone is killed or has unfinished business on Earth, they will become a spirit that haunts the land until they are set free by the help of the living.
Smurfs[]
Smurfs typically believe that all life is recycled through life and death, as controlled by Mother Nature and Father Time. As Papa Smurf explains, he is open-minded to the possibility of their being an afterlife or not, and yet he -- like any other living creature -- is sometimes afraid of death, but he understands that it is a natural phenomena. After seeing evidence of reincarnation with the Tracing Mirror in the Season 1 episode, "Beyond the Mirror's Reflection," he and his little Smurfs are less afraid of the subject.
Many Smurfs have also accepted the fact that ghosts exist, especially those who have had firsthand encounters. Brainy and Clumsy once helped Peewit solve a ghostly invasion in Quarrel Castle while Peewit was house-sitting for Selwyn and Talullah.
Likewise, Harmony once nearly lost his soul to the Ghost Writer after accepting a musical composition that wound up being a plagiarism of multiple other deceased musicians. He was saved when Papa Smurf and the others were able to play the composition for the judges of Harmony's trial, thus proving it was the Ghost Writer who lured him into a trap from the start.
Smurfs: The Magical Blue stories[]
In the Smurfs: The Magical Blue story series, Scouter faces a near-death experience when she was infected by the Sickness Of Death, and was thought to have died, luckily, her fellow Smurfs brought the Rose Of Life that brought her back in the world, much to her and the Smurfs relieve.
Smurfs: The Thomas & Friends Series[]
In the first story of the series, Clumsy and Hefty almost got run over by Thomas while Hefty was helping freeing Clumsy from getting stuck in one of the rails.
In the second story, Gargamel almost released Latino into his boiling stew pot.
Types of death[]
- Natural causes
- Suicide
- Homicide, or murder
- Patricide
- Abortion, or pre-natal infanticide
- Genocide
- Gendercide